Evangeline

This Monday, I had to take Heather to the dentist in Bridgetown. While waiting, I stopped for a coffee at the aRoma Mocha café.

I noticed an old copy of Longfellow’s Evangeline on the counter. The price was marked at five dollars. The cafe owner allowed me to buy it.

The book includes an introduction to Longfellow’s Life and Works, the Acadians and the Metre of Evangeline, and maps of both Nova Scotia and Louisiana.

’What can a father do when the only solution offered to his rare and troubled son is to put him on psychoactive drugs? What can he say when his son comes to him wanting an explanation for a world clearly in love with its own destruction?’

This book is a remarkable story, following his previous, Pulitzer-Prize Winning book ’The Overstory’. ‘Bewilderment contains overtones of Greta Thunberg. Check out CBC Writers and Company, October 29, 2021, interview with Eleanor Wachtel.

Postscript

In Panama, they recently have named a new species of frog after Greta Thunberg.

Acknowledgements

To my old school friend, Andrew Ronay who had expressed an interest in the Story of Evangeline. Edward added the graphics and links. Heather maintains her fascination with both birds and plants. For Richard Powers; his geography is the Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee. For us, it is the Acadian Forest, and beyond.

References

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1914, Evangeline (Edited with notes and introduction by Lewis B. Semple), MacMillan Company.

Richard Powers, 2021, Bewilderment, Random House Canada.

Eleanor Wachtel, CBC Writers and Company, October 29, 2021, Conversation with Richard Powers.